Jurchen language
Encyclopedia
Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria
, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern
Tungusic
language.
for Jurchen language was developed in 1119 by Wanyan Xiyin
. A number of books were translated into Jurchen, but none have survived, even in fragments. Surviving samples of Jurchen writing are quite scarce.
One of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the reign of Emperor Shizong. It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.
A number of other Jurchen inscriptions exist as well. For example, in the 1950s a tablet was found in Penglai
, Shandong
, containing a poem in Jurchen by a poet called (in Chinese transcription) Aotun Liangbi. Although written in Jurchen, the poem was composed using the Chinese "regulated verse" format known as qiyan lüshi. It is speculated that the choice of this format—rather than something closer to the Jurchen folk poetry was due to the influence of the Chinese literature on the educated class of the Jurchens.
by the Chinese government's Bureau of Translators (四夷馆, Siyi Guan) and the Bureau of Interpreters (会同馆, Huitong Guan). Both were found as sections of the manuscripts prepared by those two agencies, whose job was to help the imperial government to communicate with foreign nations or ethnic minorities, in writing or orally, respectively.
Although the Bureau of Translators' multilingual dictionary (华夷译语, Hua-Yi yiyu, 'Sino-Barbarian Dictionary') was known to Europeans since 1789 (thanks to Jean Joseph Marie Amiot
), a copy with a Jurchen section (Hua-Yi yiyu) was not discovered until the late 19th century, when it was studied and published by Wilhelm Grube
in 1896. Soon research continued in Japan and China as well. It was this dictionary which first made serious study of the Jurchen language possible. This dictionary contained translation of Chinese words into Jurchen, given in Jurchen characters
and in phonetic transcription
(rather imprecise, since the transcription was done by means of Chinese characters).
The vocabulary lists compiled by the Bureau of Interpreters became first known to the Western scholars in 1910, and in 1912 L. Aurousseau reported the existence of a manuscript of it with a Jurchen section, supplied to him by Yang Shoujing. This dictionary is similar in its structure to the one from the Bureau of Translators, but it only gives the "phonetic" transcription of Jurchen words (by means of Chinese characters) and not their writing in Jurchen script.
The time of its creation is not certain; various scholars thought that it could be created as late as ca. 1601 (by Mao Ruicheng) or as early as 1450–1500; Daniel Kane
's analysis of the dictionary, published in 1989, surmises, based on the way the Jurchen words are transcribed into Chinese, that it may have been written in the first half of the 16th century.
Both dictionaries record very similar forms of the language, which can be considered a late form or Jurchen, or an early form of Manchu
.
According to modern researchers, both dictionaries were compiled by the two Bureaus' staff not very competent in Jurchen. They compilers of the two dictionaries were apparently not well familiar with the grammar of the language; the language, in Daniel Kane
's words, was geared to basic communications "with 'barbarians', when this was absolutely inevitable, or when they brought tribute to the Court".
, some important information on the Jurchen language is provided by the Jurchen words, transcribed using Chinese characters in Chinese documents. These include:
available to modern scholars are in Chinese. Therefore, when names of Jurchens, or Jurchen terms, are written in English, the same writing convention is usually followed as for Chinese words: that is, the English spelling is simply the Romanization (Pinyin
or Wade–Giles, as the case may be) of the Modern Standard Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese characters that were used to render the Jurchen name or word. This standard presentation does not attempt to reconstruct the original Jurchen pronunciation of the word, or even the 12th-century Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese characters (even though more or less hypothetical
Middle Chinese
pronunciation of Chinese characters can be looked up in specialized dictionaries and databases, and reconstructing pronunciation of some Jurchen words is attempted by some authors as well.) Thus, for example, the Jurchen name of the first Jin emperor is written in Chinese as 完颜阿骨打, and appears in English scholarship as Wanyan Aguda
(using Pinyin) or Wan-yen A-ku-ta (using the Wade–Giles system).
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern
Southwestern Tungusic languages
The Southwestern Tungusic languages, also called the Jurchen-Manchu group, are one of two branches within the Southern Tungusic languages. It consists of Manchu, Xibe, and the extinct Jurchen....
Tungusic
Tungusic languages
The Tungusic languages form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain...
language.
Writing
A writing systemJurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
for Jurchen language was developed in 1119 by Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin was a trusted advisor of the Jurchen chieftain, Wanyan Aguda . Described by modern writers as the "Chief Shaman" of the pre-Jin Jurchen state, he became deeply interested in Chinese culture, and isparticularly known as the creator of the first writing system for the Jurchen...
. A number of books were translated into Jurchen, but none have survived, even in fragments. Surviving samples of Jurchen writing are quite scarce.
One of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the reign of Emperor Shizong. It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.
A number of other Jurchen inscriptions exist as well. For example, in the 1950s a tablet was found in Penglai
Penglai
Penglai, Peng Lai, or Peng-lai may refer to:*Penglai City, Shandong, China*Mount Penglai, a place in Chinese mythology*Penglai Pagoda in Penglai City...
, Shandong
Shandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
, containing a poem in Jurchen by a poet called (in Chinese transcription) Aotun Liangbi. Although written in Jurchen, the poem was composed using the Chinese "regulated verse" format known as qiyan lüshi. It is speculated that the choice of this format—rather than something closer to the Jurchen folk poetry was due to the influence of the Chinese literature on the educated class of the Jurchens.
Ming Dynasty Jurchen dictionaries
The two most extensive resources on the Jurchen language available to today's linguists are two dictionaries created during the Ming DynastyMing Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
by the Chinese government's Bureau of Translators (四夷馆, Siyi Guan) and the Bureau of Interpreters (会同馆, Huitong Guan). Both were found as sections of the manuscripts prepared by those two agencies, whose job was to help the imperial government to communicate with foreign nations or ethnic minorities, in writing or orally, respectively.
Although the Bureau of Translators' multilingual dictionary (华夷译语, Hua-Yi yiyu, 'Sino-Barbarian Dictionary') was known to Europeans since 1789 (thanks to Jean Joseph Marie Amiot
Jean Joseph Marie Amiot
Jean Joseph Marie Amiot was a FrenchJesuit missionary.-Life:Joseph Marie Amiot was born at Toulon. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1737 and was sent in 1750 as a missionary to China. He soon won the confidence of the Qianlong Emperor and spent the remainder of his life at Beijing...
), a copy with a Jurchen section (Hua-Yi yiyu) was not discovered until the late 19th century, when it was studied and published by Wilhelm Grube
Wilhelm Grube
Wilhelm Grube was a German sinologist and ethnographer. He is particularly known for his work on Tungusic languages and the Jurchen language.-Biography:Grube was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1855...
in 1896. Soon research continued in Japan and China as well. It was this dictionary which first made serious study of the Jurchen language possible. This dictionary contained translation of Chinese words into Jurchen, given in Jurchen characters
Jurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
and in phonetic transcription
Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
(rather imprecise, since the transcription was done by means of Chinese characters).
The vocabulary lists compiled by the Bureau of Interpreters became first known to the Western scholars in 1910, and in 1912 L. Aurousseau reported the existence of a manuscript of it with a Jurchen section, supplied to him by Yang Shoujing. This dictionary is similar in its structure to the one from the Bureau of Translators, but it only gives the "phonetic" transcription of Jurchen words (by means of Chinese characters) and not their writing in Jurchen script.
The time of its creation is not certain; various scholars thought that it could be created as late as ca. 1601 (by Mao Ruicheng) or as early as 1450–1500; Daniel Kane
Daniel Kane (linguist)
Daniel Kane is an Australian linguist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.-Biography:...
's analysis of the dictionary, published in 1989, surmises, based on the way the Jurchen words are transcribed into Chinese, that it may have been written in the first half of the 16th century.
Both dictionaries record very similar forms of the language, which can be considered a late form or Jurchen, or an early form of Manchu
Manchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
.
According to modern researchers, both dictionaries were compiled by the two Bureaus' staff not very competent in Jurchen. They compilers of the two dictionaries were apparently not well familiar with the grammar of the language; the language, in Daniel Kane
Daniel Kane (linguist)
Daniel Kane is an Australian linguist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.-Biography:...
's words, was geared to basic communications "with 'barbarians', when this was absolutely inevitable, or when they brought tribute to the Court".
Jurchen words in Chinese texts
Besides the inscriptions and one or two surviving manuscripts in Jurchen scriptJurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
, some important information on the Jurchen language is provided by the Jurchen words, transcribed using Chinese characters in Chinese documents. These include:
- The list of 125 Jurchen words in Jin Guoyu Jie ("Explanation of the national language"), an appendix to the Jin Shi ("The history of the Jin Dynasty").
- Jurchen names and words throughout the Jin Shi.
- An appendix with Jurchen words in Da Jin guozhi ("The veritable annals of the Jin Dynasty"), the text prepared in 1234 by Yuwen Mouzhao.
Writing Jurchen names in English
Due to the scarcity of surviving Jurchen-language inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of primary documentary sources on the Jurchen peopleavailable to modern scholars are in Chinese. Therefore, when names of Jurchens, or Jurchen terms, are written in English, the same writing convention is usually followed as for Chinese words: that is, the English spelling is simply the Romanization (Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
or Wade–Giles, as the case may be) of the Modern Standard Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese characters that were used to render the Jurchen name or word. This standard presentation does not attempt to reconstruct the original Jurchen pronunciation of the word, or even the 12th-century Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese characters (even though more or less hypothetical
Historical Chinese phonology
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European...
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
pronunciation of Chinese characters can be looked up in specialized dictionaries and databases, and reconstructing pronunciation of some Jurchen words is attempted by some authors as well.) Thus, for example, the Jurchen name of the first Jin emperor is written in Chinese as 完颜阿骨打, and appears in English scholarship as Wanyan Aguda
Wanyan Aguda
Emperor Taizu of Jin was Emperor of Jin from January 28, 1115 to September 19, 1123.He was the chieftain of the Jurchen Wanyan tribe, founder and first emperor of the Jin Dynasty . He was the younger brother of Wanyan Wuyashu...
(using Pinyin) or Wan-yen A-ku-ta (using the Wade–Giles system).
Literature
- Herbert FrankeHerbert FrankeThis is an article about a German sinologist. For the science fiction writer, see Herbert W. FrankeHerbert Franke was a German historian of China...
, Denis Twitchett, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368. The Cambridge History of ChinaThe Cambridge History of ChinaThe Cambridge History of China is an ongoing series of books published by Cambridge University Press covering the early and modern history of China. It has been described as "the largest and most comprehensive history of China in the English language"....
, vol 6. Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-521-24331-9. Partial text on Google Books - Wilhelm GrubeWilhelm GrubeWilhelm Grube was a German sinologist and ethnographer. He is particularly known for his work on Tungusic languages and the Jurchen language.-Biography:Grube was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1855...
, Die Sprache und Schrift der Jučen. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1896. - Daniel KaneDaniel Kane (linguist)Daniel Kane is an Australian linguist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.-Biography:...
, The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. (Uralic and Altaic Series, Vol. 153). Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Bloomington, Indiana, 1989. ISBN 0-933070-23-3. - Gisaburo N. Kiyose, A Study of the Jurchen Language and Script: Reconstruction and Decipherment. Kyoto: Horitsubunka-sha, 1977. ISBN 4-589-00794-0.